bath salts

by

Homemade Bath Salts

Another homemade gift item. I made these for my step-mom and my aunt.

This one began as an attempt to make these bath bombs, but it turned out to just be salts.

Here is our story. I adjusted the directions to what we did, so if you want the “bomb” part, you need to follow her recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 3 c cornstarch
  • 3 c baking soda
  • 4-5 c lavender epsom salt
  • 1 c lemon juice
  • blue and red food coloring
  • muffin tins

Directions:

  1. Combine all ingredients (except food coloring) in a bowl and mix
  2. Add several drops of food coloring to get desired coloring
  3. Press firmly into a muffin tins
  4. Let dry several hours or overnight
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Supplies were all purchased at Walmart.

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Perfect and ready to be set.

So here is where we went wrong. I scoured several of these bath bomb recipes, and many said you could substitute lemon juice for citric acid. Well my pea brain didn’t translate that lemon juice is a liquid whereas the citric acid is a solid. So that liquid made a dramatic difference on the mold and how it stuck things together. For future reference, if you do substitute lemon juice, dramatically cut the amount. We added more of the dry ingredients to compensate. I estimated how much we put in there since we kind of guessed to make the consistency stick. (And I was in slight panic mode at this point, so I wasn’t thinking clearly about the documenting the measurements…)

Even after sitting for more than 24 hours, the molds did not stay as a mold.

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They were like mush.

Sooo, we decided to just keep them as mush and put them in the jars as salts. I will prevail!

I added a scoop to each one so the recipients can easily get enough out for a relaxing bath.

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This “recipe” made two of these large jars as salts.

Things to know if you attempt these:

1. Make sure you know what you are doing when you make substitutions.

2. Use silicone molds. Fortunately for this part, we could scoop them out with a spoon, but if they had hardened I am not sure they would have come out as nicely.

3. You will make a big mess and your kitchen will be overwhelmed with the smell of lavender. (Maybe the mess is just me…)

4. You should probably use someone else’s recipe. Just saying.

I will say that these do work though, so if you want bath salts, have at this recipe!

I hope you enjoyed another round of Pinterest vs. Stephanie.